"James Tiptree Jr. - Your Haploid Heart" - читать интересную книгу автора (Tiptree James Jr)

Finally came the steady drumming of a highway, and when I had lost almost all
hope, we stopped. The driver got out and came around to open up. This was bad.
I had done some knife work on the canvas curtain, but I wasn't sure I could
move. Frantically, I cut the last threads and pushed and rolled myself through
to the front floorboards. The pain was shocking. There were figures outside
the open cab door, but no one heard me above the uproar. I heard the tailgate
slam-the driver was corning back. I cried out and pitched myself out. I must
have blacked out as I hit. The next thing I heard was the crunch of the
roller's tires by my head. Something filmy was over my face, something was
pressing me down. 1 felt quick hands on me, voices whispering: "Stay down!" I
stayed down, all right. The world went away and didn't come back except as hot
clouds of pain and confusion for several days. My first really clear moment
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came in the form of an endless plain of grass lurching across my view. I
focused interestedly, and it stayed put. It was I who was doing the lurching,
tied into the saddle of a pack beast. Ahead of me was a small hooded rider. I
gazed contentedly at the saffron robes, reveling in no-pain. We had, it seemed
to me, been traveling thus for some time. The rider ahead looked about, and
suddenly my beast was prodded into violent flight across a stream bed. Then
both beasts were under trees, and the rider was off and racing up the bank in
a whirl of silk. This, too, seemed to have happened many times before-and
there had been night and stars, and hot days in thickets, and pain, and soft
hands. My guide returned, slowly, throwing back the hood. The face I saw was
the flower face of the child who had put the note in my hand. Her eyes were
smiling stars, her hair was the night sky, as she bent over me. I breathed in
her perfume. And then I remembered what I knew. "Friends come now," she
smiled, the voice like a bird's wing. She laid a slight, violently alive hand
over my heart, and we stayed thus until hoof-beats pounded close. There were
three bright-robed Flenni and a larger rider- "Pax!" I croaked. "Ian,
man!" "Where are we?" "You're coming to the mountains. To the camp." But my
little guide was already up and riding away. Of course, I thought, my
knowledge a cold sadness. The men had stayed hooded, too. They got me up and
going, although I kept twisting round against the pain to see her dwindling
across the savannah. Pax did most of the talking. "What happened to Goffafa?"
I asked. "That kralik. We came to a party of Flenn women. He was going to
shoot them down." "Shoot them?" "He got wild, as if they were dangerous
vermin. I had to take his gun away. Like fighting a rubber octopus. He glared
at me and foamed, and believe it or not he threw up his lunch. Agh! I got him
in the roller and he tried to brain me with the Geiger." "So you strangled
him?" "I only choked him a little. Last I saw of him he was crawling. I was
going to come back for him when he cooled off." "He's dead. The Esthaan
Council has you booked for murder." Pax gave a growl of disgust. "Some Flenni
found him during the night. They told me he shot two of them when they offered
him water, and they finished him. I believe it." He smote his boot, and his
mount curvetted. "Those swine, Ian! I can't begin to tell you what I've
learned. The Esthaans won't let them raise food! The Flenni start farms and
the Esthaans come out here in those gasbag fliers and spray poison. They